Dr. Charles E. Houser.
America has lately been designated in a
celebrated cartoon as “The Melting Pot That Wouldn’t Melt.”
Whatever the truth of that statement may be, every thinking
individual can locate in his mind one or more instances to prove the
contrary–that foreign blood will, with the passing of time, melt
into genuine American citizenship. This is notably true in the case
of the Houser family, of German ancestry, coming to American shores
in Revolutionary times, and identified with America and her history
down through the changing years, to the present day.

Dr. Charles E.
Houser, practicing physician and surgeon of Vici, Oklahoma, is a
representative of that family. He was born in Putnam, Illinois, March
18, 1860, and is the son of John Houser, born in Ohio in 1836, and
the grandson of Phillip Houser, born in Pennsylvania in 1804.

Phillip Houser moved
from his native state to Ohio and thence to Missouri, where he was a
pioneer stock raiser and general- farmer. He was a successful man,
and a man who was held in general high esteem throughout his section
of the country. He died in 1864. His son, John Houser, moved out of
his native state, Ohio, and settled in Putnam, Illinois, when he was
still a very young man. He married in Putnam, and in the year 1866 he
made his way with his family to Missouri and settled in Mercer
County. He lived there, engaged in rural pursuits, until 1894, when
he went to Texas. Five years later he left that state and came to
Oklahoma, settling in Dewey County, on a homestead tract of 160
acres. This land he sold after he had proven title to the
satisfaction of the government, and at the present time he is living
on his farm one mile east of Vici. This is a well cultivated tract of
120 acres, which he acquired soon after he had disposed of his
government land. He has been a farmer and stockman all his life, and
has always
enjoyed a great deal of success in that line. He is a Mason, and in
politics is republican.

Mr. Houser married
Nancy Bailey, born in New York State in 1833. She died in Mercer
County, Missouri, in 1880, leaving four children, the eldest of them
being Doctor Houser of this review. Morris L., the second born, is a
farmer and lives nine miles southeast of Vici. Oswin W. is also an
Oklahoma farmer, and Williams B. has a fine farm adjoining that of
his father, one mile to the east of Vici.

Charles E. Houser
attended the public schools in Mercer County, Missouri, and was
graduated from the high school in Lineville, Iowa, with the class of
1880. Following that he studied telegraphy and was with the
Metropolitan Lines in Chicago for two years, and later was assistant
to the operator at Lineville, Iowa, for the Rock Island Road. Each of
these positions gave him a valuable experience. In 1881 he became
engaged in teaching and for the next eight years he was occupied in
the teaching profession in the public schools of Missouri and Kansas.
In 1889 he began the study of medicine in the Keokuk Medical College,
and he was graduated with the class of 1891, degree of M. D. In the
same year he established a practice in Millgrove, Missouri, where he
remained until 1896. He then located in Marion, Missouri, spending
two years there, and in 1898 he settled in Aulville, Missouri, where
he was occupied professionally until 1906. It was in that year that
he severed connections with that community and came to Vici, where he
has since been engaged in practice along general medical and surgical
lines. He has his offices in the Houser Building, on Broadway.

Doctor Houser has
augmented his training by a postgraduate course in the Chicago
Medical College and Polyclinic, and has constantly studied to keep
abreast of the times in his profession, by
that he is one of the best equipped
medical men to be found in this section of the state.

In 1912 Doctor
Houser, a republican in politics, was appointed under President Taft,
postmaster of Vici, which office he held until August, 1914. He is a
member of numerous fraternal orders, prominent among them being the
Masonic order, in which he has Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and
Eastern Star affiliations. Other fraternal societies in which he has
membership are the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of Gentry,
Missouri; the Modern Woodmen of America, Vici Camp No. 11310, and the
Mystic Workers, of Aulville, Missouri. He was at one time a member of
the Knights of Pythias, but has lately withdrawn from that order. In
all these societies Doctor Houser is prominent and popular, and he
1ms a wide circle of friends in and about the city.

Doctor Houser was
married in Ravenna, Missouri, in 1896, to Miss Dora E. Coates,
daughter of Jesse Coates, a farming man of Kansas, now deceased. One
child has been born to Doctor and Mrs. Houser–Jessie Gwendolyn,
born March 5, 1902. She is now a student in the Vici High School.